Yesterday, I interviewed Dr. Crandall, who teaches in the anthropology department here at BYU and teaches a class dealing with the Kalahari bushmen. I decided to record this interview instead of taking notes so that I could focus on the aspect of learning orally instead of being distracted by writing. The things I remember from listening to Dr. Crandall were:- The clicking noises in the languages of the Bushmen are just sounds and, although they are interesting to us, they do not mean anything.
- The Bushmen language is passed down like any other language: it is the language that the children learned while growing up.
- The current theory about the descent of the Bushmen is that they came from Asia: not all the way from China, but Asia as it used to be known.
- One way the Bushmen express themselves is through "mood songs". One example of this is a story of a man who's brother-in-law called out to him, but he did not respond. His brother-in-law could not find their camp until the next morning and the man felt so horrible that he wrote a song expressing his feelings.
- There are more malevolent spirits that good spirits.
- The spirits of the dead sometimes stay downwind of their graves.
- Jealousy is like a sickness that has to be cured before it can be removed.
